Authors: Giorgio Scerbanenco
Traitors to All (27 page)
‘I’ve finished,’ Duca said, and went to the window: a tram was passing.
‘Take the young lady down,’ Carrua said to Mascaranti.
‘Goodbye,’ Susanna Pani said to Carrua. ‘Goodbye,’ she said to Duca, raising her voice a little.
‘Goodbye,’ Duca said and even made a curt little bow: goodbye, goddess of vengeance, goddess of purity of heart and conscience, goddess who came to confess her guilt in
order to have – is that what it’s called? – the punishment she deserved.
‘She could get as much as fifteen years,’ Carrua said when she had gone out with Mascaranti.
Duca again looked out of the window: the first lorry was passing.
‘Because at the trial,’ Carrua went on, ‘she’ll insist on saying that the crime was premeditated, and no lawyer will ever persuade her to tell a lie or keep quiet about anything, no, she’ll tell the whole truth, because she’s a complete idiot.’
Duca turned and came back to Carrua’s desk. ‘Please,’ he said in a low voice, ‘don’t say she’s a complete idiot, don’t even think it.’
‘Why shouldn’t I say it?’ Carrua said, getting heated. ‘She was at home nearly five thousand kilometres from here, nobody knew anything about her, she had nothing to do with that awful bunch, she’d killed some people who deserved to die, why did she have to come back here to get from ten to fifteen years? For whose benefit? When she comes out, she’ll be over forty, life will have passed her by, why shouldn’t I say she’s an idiot? I do say it.’
‘No, please, don’t say it,’ Duca sat down next to him and with extreme patience and with a very low voice, said, ‘Don’t you like the fact that there are people like her? Or would you prefer everybody to be like Sompani, like Claudio Valtraga?’
‘Yes, I do like that fact, but she’ll be wasting the best years of her life in prison, and for nothing. That’s really stupid.’
‘Yes, she’ll be wasting the best years of her life in prison,’ he said patiently, leaning towards him, ‘but that’s why you should respect her.’
After a pause, Carrua said, ‘I do respect her, but don’t bite me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Duca said: he was a little tired, and he collapsed on the uncomfortable chair.
Then, glancing irritably at Mascaranti, who had come back in at that moment, Carrua said, ‘What was all that? What was that letter you sent me with Galileo’s recantation? You know, I’m not that clever, I don’t understand, what does it mean?’
Duca turned towards him. ‘It means I need fifty thousand lire as an advance on my salary.’ The salary for the catcher of thieves and whores: at eleven his sister and niece and Livia were coming from Inverigo and he wanted to take them to lunch and buy them a few little gifts.
‘But you haven’t even been hired yet,’ Carrua said. He stood up, opened the little safe on the wall, fiddled about with something inside. ‘Sign,’ he said when he had filled out a form.
Duca took the money: it was best for him to buy a shirt immediately, as soon as the shops opened, because if Lorenza saw him with those threadbare cuffs it would sadden her.
Carrua gave him a look almost of hate. ‘I suppose that makes you our colleague.’
‘Thanks.’ Duca put the money in his pocket. ‘Can you have Mascaranti go with me?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Carrua said mockingly to Mascaranti, ‘Take our new colleague home.’
Mascaranti stood up. At the door Duca turned and said, almost shyly, ‘Can’t you do anything for her? Anything at all?’
‘Like what?’ Carrua roared.
‘I thought maybe keep her in a separate room for the time being, not surrounded by whores,’ he proposed, shyly.
‘And where am I going to find a separate room?’ Carrua
said. ‘The clientele here is constantly increasing, we’ll soon have to keep them in the courtyard.’
‘I was also thinking you could have a word with the examining magistrate, explain everything to him,’ Duca said, ‘and then, as far as her defence goes, you could get her a good lawyer who wouldn’t even charge a lira.’
Carrua stood up and snarled, actually snarled mockingly, ‘Duca, I serve the law, I couldn’t do anything if it was my father or mother. Was I able to do anything for you? Didn’t you spend three years in prison even though you were my blue-eyed boy? And now there’s nothing I can do for her, nothing at all.’ There was real bitterness in the mockery.
It was true, there was nothing they could do, only respect her. He left the room.
1
. Giorgio Strehler, distinguished Italian theatre director and founder of the Piccolo Teatro in Milan.
2
. A reference to Davide Auseri, a character in the first Duca Lamberti novel,
A Private Venus
3
. Esculapius (Asclepius in Greek): the god of medicine.
4
. Livia Ussaro, a major character in
A Private Venus,
whose face was severely disfigured by a gangster while working on a case with Duca. At the end of that novel, she was sent to recover at the villa belonging to the father of Davide Auseri (see above).
5
. Occam’s razor: a philosophical principle stating that, among several hypotheses, one should always choose the one requiring the fewest assumptions.
6
. Plateau Rosa: an area of the Alps popular with skiers.
7
. In September 1943, the Italian government, which had just deposed Mussolini’s Fascists, signed an armistice with the Allies, to which the Germans responded by invading Italy.
8
. A reference to the well-known Italian film comedy
Seduced and Abandoned
(1964).
9
. The Alto Adige, or South Tyrol, is a largely German-speaking province of northern Italy. In the 1950s and 1960s, a German-speaking underground organisation in favour of secession from Italy committed a number of terrorist acts.
10.
Cesare Beccaria was an eighteenth-century Italian jurist and philosopher, whose most famous work was
On Crimes and Punishments.
11.
A reference to the Italian poet Gabriele d’Annunzio, famous for his sensual style of writing.
12.
Africa Addio
: an Italian documentary film, premiered in 1966.
13.
Gothic Line: the last major German line of defence in the Italian campaign at the end of World War II.
The first book in the classic Italian
noir series, The Milano Quartet
The death of a young woman in a gritty industrial neighborhood of Milan sparks off a tragic series of events, which only detective Duca Lamberti is brave enough—or desperate enough—to follow to their source.
$16.95 U.S./Can.
Paperback: 978-1-61219-335-9
Ebook: 978-1-61219-336-6
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